Religious Truth & The Test Of Time

There’s a tiny congregation in the Pacific Northwest of people who approach religion like a buffet line. The New York Times reports that the pastor

donned vestments adorned with the symbols of nearly a dozen religions. He unfolded a portable bookshelf and set the Koran beside the Hebrew Bible, with both of them near two volumes of the “Humanist Manifesto” and the Sioux wisdom of “Black Elk Speaks.” Candles, stones, bells and flowers adorned the improvised altar.

More:

They had come together with about 20 other members to celebrate the end of their third year as the congregation of the Living Interfaith Church, the holy mash-up that Mr. Greenebaum had created. Yearning for decades to find a religion that embraced all religions, and secular ethical teachings as well, he had finally followed the mantra of Seattle’s indie music scene: “D.I.Y.,” meaning “do it yourself.”

So as the service progressed, the liturgy moved from a poem by the Sufi mystic Rumi to the “passing of the peace” greeting that traced back to early Christianity to a Buddhist responsive reading to an African-American spiritual to a rabbinical song.

In other weeks, the service has drawn from Bahai, Shinto, Sikh, Hindu and Wiccan traditions, and from various humanist sources.

If the Living Interfaith Church could appear hippie-dippy, as if scented with sage and patchouli, that impression proved deceptive. Mr. Greenebaum’s goals were serious, and they exemplified a movement in American religion toward dissolving denominational lines.

If they believe in everything, then they believe in nothing. I don’t understand the attraction of this. The Koran, the Hebrew Bible, and the Christian Bible are all mutually exclusive. They can all be equally false, but cannot all be equally true. I find it impossible to take this kind of thing seriously. It’s just dilettantism. I mean, I can respect the integrity of the people who choose to worship here, but I find their beliefs impossible to take seriously — this, as distinct from, say, a Tibetan Buddhist or a Sufi Muslim, whose beliefs I reject but whose traditions I can respect as having weight and coherence.

I thought about this story tonight while watching a documentary, produced by Werner Herzog, about fur trappers living in a Siberian village. The things these men know how to do astonish. They live largely by traditional skills, handed down from time immemorial. One of the trappers tells the filmmaker that all these skills came down to them over the years, proven by the test of time. It made me think of how both Tibetan Buddhist monks and Orthodox Christian monks claim that their spiritual practices are not just interesting things to do, but are techniques for reaching God that have been proven by centuries of practice. Strictly speaking, this doesn’t mean that they are true, but the claims that the two propositionally incompatible traditions make have the right to be taken seriously because so many people have been doing them for so long. They must in some way speak to the deepest longings of the human soul. I believe ultimate truth can be found, in some fragmentary form, in most religions, because divine grace goes where God wills it. But that is not the same thing as saying that all religions are equally true or equally false. My view is contained in the expression, “We know where the Church is, but we don’t know where the Church is not.”

The connection, I think, to what the Siberian trapper does is that the trapper applies his traditional knowledge toward accomplishing a goal. He is not expressing his creativity or satisfying his aesthetic interests by making his own skis, or constructing hunting huts to survive the winter; he is using the wisdom of his traditional culture to help him accomplish things he must do for the sake of his own survival and the survival of his family and village. He knows that the old ways work, because they have been tried and perfected by generations and generations of use. To feel free to abandon the ways he was taught would be literally to risk his life. Now, the trappers do use some modern methods. They have motors for their boats, and snowmobiles. But you can see that their adaptations to modern life are limited, probably by their remoteness and relative poverty. Anyway, the point is that the trappers submit to tradition because tradition works; it is a tried and true method for reaching their goal.

What could the goal of the DIY syncretists of the Times story be? According to the church’s website:

Interfaith is a faith that embraces the teachings of all spiritual paths that lead us to seek a life of compassionate action. Interfaith, as a faith, does not seek to discover which religion or spiritual path is “right.” Rather, it recognizes that we are all brothers and sisters, and that at different times and different places we have encountered the sacred differently. … We can raise our children to respect the beliefs of others.

So, the goal of this church is to lead people to “compassionate action.” But what does that mean? How can you know what counts as compassion? How do you mediate differences of opinion among the group, if there is no such thing as right belief? Is it really the case that in order to learn to respect the beliefs of others, you have to deny the reality of difference?

I don’t think so. This is not true diversity, but unity and harmony won by denying real diversity. It’s the diversity of indifference. It is an approach to religion that considers religion as an expression of human thought and feeling, not as an expression of metaphysical and spiritual realities. It won’t last. It can’t last. You can’t build a lasting faith on the principle that there is no such thing as religious truth. Sooner or later the winter will come, and you will have to have prepared for it if you are going to survive.

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91 Responses to Religious Truth & The Test Of Time

Rod, that was true in the very early days, when Christianity was seen as and was in fact a breakaway Jewish sect. It hasn’t been true for centuries. Today Christianity is seen by even the most religious Jews as another religion – not true in its essence, from their point of view, but not heresy in the sense you mean.

A side comment regarding the Werner Herzog film you recently watched: If you enjoyed that you really should watch “Dersu Uzala” by Akira Kurosawa.

As for the religion of everything that holds nothing sacred, I take heart in the Dalai Lama’s advice for Christians to study their own religion and find it’s truths and insights, and not chase after Buddhism.

Bernie writes (and my comments are in square brackets because I don’t know how to quote properly on this software):

“I believe in objective (ultimate) truth. The simplest example of this is the question: “Does God exist?”

[In my view, this shows the problem of “ultimate truth” or at least as it is phrased here. There’s no way to tell if God exists or not. Belief in something termed “God” certainly exists. The fact of God’s existence or not is probably not determinable as true or false in any normal sense of the words.]

There either is a God or there is not. Both answers cannot be true. If there are differences of opinion on this or other significant theological questions, who mediates or decides what is right belief? Is it the pastor, the individual, the hierarchy of the church, etc.? Who has such authority and why? These are very important questions in the search for truth. Each person must decide the answers for himself, of course.

[If the original question was one of fact, which it clearly is not given what followed, it’s not one subject to interpretation. The sun rises in the east. It doesn’t matter what word is used for “east” because the sun rises over there -> (pointing to the east), always has and always will. The question of God’s existence is not subject to such answers, not so far as we can tell factually at this time. The truth that is revealed by the question says a whole lot more about the truth about society and human beings than about any truth about “God.”]

If all beliefs are not equally true or worthy of respect, and they are not, what role does *respect* play?

[Respect none of them. They’re all manure. That said, some manure is better for fertillizing one’s society than others.]

I do not agree with our relativistic, secular culture that says all beliefs should be shown respect.

[I agree. Some cow manure is clearly worse than others and should be thrown out altogether. Like the moron I saw at the grocery yesterday who’s shirt proclaimed “Smoke meth. Worship Satan.” No respect for that.]

I believe the people who hold them should be respected as our brothers and sisters, and we should be as courteous and reasonable as possible in any form of disagreement we show, from silence to our stated disagreement. Each case is different, but saying nothing should not always reign over our integrity in holding to our beliefs. Agape love does not mean always being silent and *nice*. But we should try not to insult or hurt others. Each believes somewhat differently.”

I don’t know why you have to badmouth syncretism as foolish and for the ignorant. Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Leone Ebreo, and Erasmus were all syncretists and all brilliant philosophers. In addition, all branches of mysticism are syncretic is some way, including kabbala, the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius, sufism, and the entire Druze faith. Please don’t comment on an entire branch of thought by only looking at one bad example of it.

The protagonist from “Happy People” wasn’t native to the Taiga. He says in the film that he was brought there by the Soviets in 1970 to tame the wilderness and pretty much left to survive by his own wits. He was able to do so not by following his own tradition and history, but by adapting to the local conditions.

The commment made by simon94022 is inaccurate. The sources of the Westboro Baptist Church’s funding are known. They do not receive money from the Left, as Simon claims, but instead the funds come from their own members and from winning lawsuits.

Westboro demands strict obedience of its members, and this includes handing over cash. Most members work outside jobs, as has been noted by members who have left.

I was sort of surprised when I finally saw a Westboro protest. Three people who held signs for a couple of hours. The counter-protest was about 100 people. I was told that the Phelps have sued people who interfere with their protests and so everyone kept their distance.

Why the constant polar plotting of “they can all be equally false but they cannot all be equally true.”?

First of all, can’t they be unequally false? Couldn’t one contain much more falsehood than the other?

And why can’t they all be 25% true, but no more. If each one states some version of “Love they neighbor as thyself”, and we decide that this is a true virtue, wouldn’t they all now be at least 1% true or so?

The arguments you put forward simply lack factual weight. The reality is that there are ideas posited in common between the Hebrew scriptures, the New Testament, and the Koran. All for example posit the existence of one, monotheistic God. All posit that men should exist in devotion to this God. All posit that stealing and lying are moral wrongs in the eyes of this God. Assuming we decide that those ideas are truth, than those are truths they hold in common. Based on those, we might say that each belief is 5% true or somesuch.

Now, both Islam and Christianity posit that they alone hold the full truth concerning God, and that the others are wrong. But this could simply be something wrong that they both hold in common.

It is a completely valid statement that the great world religions hold many truths in common, and it’s quite possible to reasonably place those books together and decide that you will seek the truths common to all of them. At the same time, you would have to judge that a mistake they hold in common is the belief that each one contains all truth. But since it is quite possible to be wrong about some things and right about others, that poses no particular challenge.

You simply demand that your choice of religion be completely true, and that others are only true insofar as they agree. You can decide to do so, but it’s hardly any logical necessity, and need not be embraced by others.

“You are looking for weight, coherence, propositional truth with a capital T – truth as you think it should be, rather than truth as it is, which may not fit so snugly into the Holy Flowchart or Sacred Venn Diagram you seem to be looking for.”

And how many posts on what to believe, how to believe, what and how not to believe in order not to look silly, and how few on how one can or should put one’s faith into practice. Belief as intellectual entertainment, building block of identity, means of differentiation and source of comfort.

Jesus was a radical, the most radical radical I have ever heard of, and radical in what he expected people to do. He actually said rather little about what he thought people should believe, and showed next to no interest in theological disputations. How can one be a christian and not live radically?

The service sounds suspiciously like the Universal Worship designed by Hazrat Inayat Khan, probably in the 1920s. Khan was a proponent of Universal Sufism, one of the first sufi teachers to admit non-Muslims to a sufi order. I think the aim of the Universal Worship was to help people move away from fighting about religion by honoring what Truth could be found in each one. In his ten founding principles, however, he stated: “There is one holy book; the sacred manuscript of nature, the only Scripture that can enlighten the reader.”

On what planet are the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible mutually exclusive? I seem to remember some fellow who is prominent in the second and is described as a fulfillment of a promise made in the first.

I didn’t want to get too esoteric, but you are hardly the first to notice the Trikaya/Trinity connection. I met a Jesuit priest actively engaged in research on the topic, and he isn’t the only one. It seems like a comparative theological approach is inevitable (and if no one gets around to it soon I might even do it myself).

@Christian Schmemann

Re: reincarnation and resurrection, the question is a good one but hinges on a common misunderstanding of the nature of the difference between Buddhism and e.g. Hinduism. Both acknowledge reincarnation, but one of the core Buddhist teachings is that there is no such thing as the “self”. So whatever it is that reincarnates, it is not “me,” at least not in the sense of the narrow ego. Furthermore, enlightenment is seen as a release from the wheel of rebirth, the wheel of suffering; enlightened beings are no longer bound at all by any sense of self or ego. Just so, Resurrection is the resurrection of the soul, the innermost part of ourselves that was created in the image and likeness of God, not our ordinary day-to-day mind.

Rod, you are looking at this phenomenon from the perspective of a “churched” person. Allow me to offer the perspective of an “unchurched” person.

First, your analogy with the hunters resonated with me, as a tradeswoman (specifically, a Journeyman Wireman). Reaching journeylevel status is a discipline, one that requires both years of study and practice. It’s a process; a Doing rather than a Being. Becoming a journeyman changes you, and you change “it”—your trade. What your trade becomes, it becomes through the practice of all the journeymen who work it. It evolves through our actions. The process stays the same, but the practices…not necessarily.

The hunters you mentioned have no dissonance between their teachings and their practice. That’s what I think a lot of people mean when they use catchphrases like “holistic” or “organic” or “authentic”—that all the elements support and enhance one another, instead of being at fundamental odds with one another.

It is true that there is a universal moral code common to all religions. This makes sense because there are certain elements that work for all human beings, our societies, and larger shared environment. It is also true that the mystics of all religions speak the same universal language. This also makes sense as mystical experiences are filtered through the same basic human nervous system. Religious differences arise in specific practices and beliefs that arise from the interpretations of those mystical experiences; those interpretations are filtered through human cultures, which themselves arise from specific physical environments and histories. So: there are elements of religion that are shared and not shared.

The “churched” have a framework in which to put those experiences; find which elements have consonance or dissonance, and how/where to move forward on the path. Some will, like the hunters, experience wholeness on the path in which they were raised. Some will sit with or struggle with the tension of dissonant elements—their journeyman path may be to develop new practices for their tradition, or rest with the tension itself. Others may find a similar tradition where changes have already been implemented but from within the same basic perspective. Still others will find their differences with their tradition of origin so great they will find a new path entirely.

The “unchurched” are different. We don’t have experience from within a religious framework or in a religious community. In addition, most of us live in a larger culture that leaves very little room for nonmaterial frameworks or experiences (relegating that part of the human spirit to art of various forms—and since very few people have access to artistic training, that portion of the human spirit can easily be underdeveloped). Anyway. We tend to experience the spiritual world as mystics—no mediation between ourselves and the infinite/undefinable. Those of us who may later seek a communal framework find it hard to find one in which we can integrate our experiences and mental/emotional resonance—think of us a hunters without training, and without a land, just the undying desire to hunt.

That’s where a lot of religious traditionalists get frustrated, throw up their hands, and say, “so what? Pick something! Anything! Even if it’s wrong!!” But that isn’t how the human mind or heart work—it is completely dysfunctional to deny one’s own experiences and/or one’s own mode of learning/understanding.

Meanwhile, religious non-traditionalists seeking a “home” pursue travels into unknown territory (spiritual communities/texts)…and find the universal similarities of moral codes and mystical expressions. Y’know, what you’re bemoaning here as dilettantism and nihilism. And you’re not completely incorrect: as I said in my earlier journeyman analogy, spirituality is a discipline, and it is mutual; it exists in relationship—it changes you, and you change it.

But…you’re criticizing people on the beginning of their spiritual journey—a beginning that can come at any age. They aren’t journeymen; they are just beginning to explore the “trades”. White belts who aren’t really sure in which art to pursue a black belt.

Also worth a reminder: some religions have boundaries that are broader and/or more porous than others. It isn’t necessarily contradictory to follow more than one path.

For what it’s worth, Unitarian Universalists generally do not claim to believe in “everything.” UUism is more individualistic than syncretistic. The UU lingo is that each individual should engage in a “free and responsible search for truth and meaning” that respects others’ religious beliefs and traditions. As such, UUs in a single congregation might variously identify themselves as Christians, Jews, atheists, pagans, etc. even though they all worship together.

Officially, yes. Unofficially, it’s a much different story – “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”. There’s a de facto humanist primacy in a lot of UU churches, especially among the older folk who’ve come to UUism as refugees from other religions, mainly Christianity. A lot of sermons in these churches read like a professor teaching a World Religions course from a old-style humanist viewpoint. (Interestingly, those raised as UUs tend to be a lot more accepting of “God-language” than their elders. This has started to create some tension in UUism as younger people push to have their own beliefs accepted).

So when UUs say “Christians, Jews, atheists, pagans, etc.”, what this tends to mean in practice is that humanism is the default position from the pulpit and from a plurality of the parishoners, with a good number of secularized Western Buddhists, a smaller number of secularized pagans, and a thin scattering of others – and UU Christians are often second or third-class citizens.

The sad thing is that UUism, on paper at least, is quite attractive to me. But actually walking through the doors…. yikes (this is based partially on my spending nearly a year at a prominent UU congregation in the Pacific Northwest a decade ago and scattered other services I’ve attended).

“It is an approach to religion that considers religion as an expression of human thought and feeling, not as an expression of metaphysical and spiritual realities.”

I don’t find this to be accurate. They almost certainly have metaphysical and spiritual realities, they’re just different realities than yours. I’ve been involved with Religious Science (est. 1927, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Science ; still going but spoiler: it’s not very scientific!) which sounds similar in some ways (less malarkey, IMO), but RS definitely has a theology of its own. That theology just doesn’t rest on spiritual exclusivity or claims of being the sole possessors of the path to salvation.

And you know, the monotheistic “there can be only one” approach to religion that you’re advancing here is hardly a universal truth. It’s not uncommon in other parts of the world for people to practice bits and pieces of several different religions/spiritual philosophies. Which shouldn’t be too surprising to a Christian in the West, really, considering that we still practice many pagan rituals. People use what works for them and generally don’t get wrapped up in intellectual debates about theology or doctrinal purity. It’s just not something that the majority of people care to spend their energy on.

And personally, I’ve found that, as someone prone to over-thinking everything, that intellectualism really just gets in the way of spirituality. Religious claims don’t make much logical sense. They were never intended to, and the more we learn about the universe, the more ridiculous those old stories will look. When I am able to stop trying to construct logical arguments to justify my spiritual practices, that is the point when those practices truly start to work for me. God is beyond my ability to reason or understand – or yours, or any Church’s.

Black Elk famously traveled with Buffalo Bill to Chicago, to see if the Wasichus (“those who take and eat the best parts”) had anything to teach his people. Observing how some lived in luxury while others of them lived in destitution, he came to the conclusion they had nothing to offer his own people in their survival.

This is not true diversity, but unity and harmony won by denying real diversity.

I agree with this. I also think it’s problematic when people from outside a tradition decide that they know better than the people within what their religion really means, what count as important beliefs and inessential ones, and what their scriptures really mean. On the other hand, I’m sufficiently self-aware that I realize that Jews could make the claim that this is a major part of Christianity, and we also see it (in a more secular way) when people insist upon pulling stuff out of the Bible or Qu’ran and insisting that those thing define what religious believers think, however different traditions within or actual individual believers deal with them.

It’s the diversity of indifference. It is an approach to religion that considers religion as an expression of human thought and feeling, not as an expression of metaphysical and spiritual realities.

I’m not so sure about this. It’s not so much indifference as the view that there’s something at the heart of all religious traditions that is real, even if that built on top of it is culturally created and not truly spiritual. It’s the basic “spiritual not religious” given some parts of the community and structure that religion has. In a way, it’s just an extreme version of certain forms of liberal Christianity (I hate the term, but in this context it’s probably clear enough what I mean) or similar movements in other traditions, that happens to be interested in other traditions too. Like others have said, basically UU.

You can’t build a lasting faith on the principle that there is no such thing as religious truth.

Are they saying that, or are they just disagreeing about what religious truth is and then claiming to find what they are referring to in all religions? I think it’s shallow–all breadth and no depth–and my view and experience is that that depth is crucial to religious practice, but I suspect they aren’t claiming that there’s no religious truth. Indeed, I’d guess that they think you (and I) are wrong in many of our beliefs. Our religions may be true, but we probably misunderstand them, under that line of thought.

The broader idea of erasing boundaries between denominations fits in well with the religious landscape in the US today, however, don’t you think? This is just much more extreme.

If they believe in everything, then they believe in nothing. I don’t understand the attraction of this. The Koran, the Hebrew Bible, and the Christian Bible are all mutually exclusive. They can all be equally false, but cannot all be equally true. I find it impossible to take this kind of thing seriously. It’s just dilettantism.

I can understand this. (Well, you would, wouldn’t you, said Rod 🙂 ). Many among us practice with some attempt at rigor and consistency the discipline of a particular faith, and God bless them for preserving what each particular faith has to offer. The world would lose something if we all belonged to a Living Interfaith Church. But I consider it almost certain that each of these traditions gets some things right, and some wrong. The jihadists and the Jesuits will both have my scalp for saying that. (I’m thinking of Ignatius of Loyola, not the snide remarks in a recent post).

None of these faiths can be 100 percent right without all the rest being at least partly wrong. But they could all be half true. I daresay a fair number could be 80 percent true. The Trinity and some of my favorite passages from the Koran can’t both be God’s Word. But just about all the faiths listed, and several unlisted, could agree on “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might.” Most could agree on “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (An Orthodox rabbi pointed out to me once, that these two commandments were enunciated by Hillel before they were pronounced by Jesus, in fact, in one gospel passage a Pharisee recited them TO Jesus, who affirmed them. Hillel first said, these are essential, the rest is mere detail, go forth and learn.) We might even achieve agreement that, those who agree on these two commandments should not fight each other over the mere details.

If some among us seek to free the best of what each faith has to offer from the rigid ideology of the faith-as-a-whole, perhaps some will come closer to what God really has in mind for us — or perhaps further away. It could degenerate into dilettantism — if it is embraced by dilettantes, or practiced in a dilettantish way. There is no inherent reason it cannot be a serious approach to seeking the teleology of the universe.

“From a Jewish point of view, Christians are heretics.”

…that was true in the very early days, when Christianity was seen as and was in fact a breakaway Jewish sect.

Jews for some centuries have been very careful how they spoke of Christianity, because a large part of the Jewish people lived in majority Christian cultures where they had to get along and not mortally offend people given to massive pogroms on the slightest offense. (Cartoons of the Son of God were definitely discouraged). Most of the rest of the Jewish people had to deal similarly with Islam, and until recently, with greater success. This was a different power relationship than when Christians were primarily a Jewish sect to be ostracized, rather than a gentile population to be placated.

But objectively, Christianity from a Jewish viewpoint is the idolatrous deification of an executed criminal.

While I am comfortable belonging to a Christian denomination, and I believe Jesus had somewhat more significance than is granted by Jewish teaching, I am open to the possibility that “son of God” was an iconic reference to something too transcendent to be explained in a manner human minds could comprehend, perhaps touched on in the creedal words “begotten, not made, of one being with the Father.” I am even more open to the idea that if we agree on the two commandments on which hangs all the law and the prophets, we should not quarrel over our more abstract differences in the stories we tell about how to obey these two commandments.

I’m not sure if Rod is sincere in actually wanting to understand this sort of thing, or is content to just indulge in some more “eccentric-bashing” of people who aren’t like him. But if he is, here goes:

First, there’s many historical roots to this kind of thinking, but probably the most influential in recent times, both in the east and in the West, is the renowned Hindu saint Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886). Ramakrishna was highly eccentric even among Hindus, but from a fairly early age was acknowledged even by the traditional Hindus to be a genuine Avatar, or Divine Incarnation. He worshipped Kali through ecstatic devotion at a famous Temple complex near Calcutta, where his parents had abandoned him because he seemed utterly useless at anything else. His worship was not traditional however, and he did many crazy things that defied the traditional cannon, however, because he experienced Kali and all the other Hindu Gods as living personas, who talked to him and interacted with him, not merely as scriptural icons, but as a living Divine Presence.

What become fascinating about Ramakrishna’s devotional life is that it expanded well past Kali or other traditional Hindu deities, to include almost every major religion in the world. He began, for example, to have spontaneous visions of Jesus and Mary, and became a devout worshipper of them, and took on the various devotional practices of Christianity for several years. To him, the Divine Presence took many, many forms, including forms entirely outside of the Hindu tradition. It also included Moslem and Sikh forms of worship, Buddhism and Jainism, and so on. He spent years spontaneously drawn to all the ways in which one could worship the Divine Presence, and his conclusion was that God was immanent in all things, in all traditions, regardless of their differences, and that one could worship the universal God by virtually any means or tradition at all.

Ramakrishna slowly became famous in the Calcutta area, and attracted a small following of mostly young men of ardent spiritual purpose. He taught them the universal nature of God, and of devotion to God, and admonished them to spread his “Gospel” to the world. Following his death, they tried to put all his teachings into practice, and created the Ramakrishna Mission, which is now one of the most famous and renowned in India. His disciples slowly spread the word of their master’s teaching throughout India, where they gained a powerful foothold. His main disciple and chosen successor, Swami Vivekananda, became famous in the West when he appeared at the Congress of Religions in Chicago in 1893, and the went on lengthy speaking tours throughout America and Europe, and back in India as well, spreading this new Gospel of universal religion. He established the Vedanta Society in America, and had a profound influence at the highest levels of American society, including the Rockefellers and at liberal universities like Harvard. He was a charismatic figure of great controversy and energy, and after his early death in 1903, the message he gave resonated for a long time to come throughout the west, at first just among those eccentric enough to entertain something different from the usual Christian orthodoxy, but over time a great many others took him and Ramakrishna seriously, in even the most unexpected places.

What is generally known as the “New Age” religious movement owes a great deal to Ramakrishna and Vivekananda’s teachings, and their view not only of Hinduism, but of all religion, and the universality of the Divine. In fact, one could easily say that it’s a direct outgrowth of their teachings.

So what this particular fellow is doing in his DIY church is very much in line with a movement that is at least 150 years old, if not more. It’s an effort to acknowledge that God is present in all religions, in all kinds of ways and practices, and doesn’t require us to only live or believe in or practice one particular tradition’s views. In that sense, even Ramakrishna was something of a heretic to orthodox Hindus, and his and Vivekananda’s teachings are considered a reformation and revival of not just Hinduism, but of religion in general, under a more universal umbrella than even traditional Hinduism offers.

The spirit of Ramakrishna’s devotion to God found a home in many, many places, including within Christianity itself, as Rod himself has noticed and seems to abhor. It’s understandable, in that this really is a very different way of approaching God as a universal Presence, rather than a tribal God who only ordains certain people who believe and practice certain things, and the rest need to find that one “true” church or religion to enjoy God’s full blessings. Ramakrishna not just felt, but actually experienced precisely the opposite, that GOd was alive in all forms of religion and worship, even in secularism. Vivekananda, for example, was a huge promoter of secularism and modernism in India, and is considered one of India’s modern heroes, on a par with Gandhi. He did not see the secular spirit as one of anti-religion, but as an embrace of all religions in the spirit of a universal God. Nor was he an enemy of traditional religion, but saw it as something well worth preserving, even while acknowledging that God Himself was universally present in all religions.

So much of the New Age, or the more universal spirit we see in our times, is not some sort of claim that all religions are the same, or that all their practices or beliefs are the same. It’s that no matter how different they are, God is present in and can be worshipped through them. It corresponds to the Hindu understanding of God as being inherently formless, and yet appearing in and through and as all forms, so that no particular image or concept of God is exclusively true, and yet it is true nonetheless. The analogy often made is that gold is the same substance no matter what shaped jewelry it is made into. The important thing is that it is made of gold, not that it be some particular form. It is the “gold” within religion that is to be worshipped, whatever the shape it might take.

Someone like this fellow mixing all the world’s religions together in his worship is simply following in this same spiritual understanding. The whole point is that whatever you do to worship and love God “works”, no matter how it’s done, as long as it is done sincerely and in the universal Spirit. Ramakrishna liked to point out that while people think it is the “method” that produces the results, it’s really not so. It is the energy and sincerity and love of the worshipper that awakens God’s graceful response, not the specifics of the method or prayer or names and forms worshipped. But that didn’t mean in his book that one should therefore abandon traditional forms. If one was drawn to a more universal kind of worship, mixing it up, that was fine too. The Hindu religion even is built around that sort of principle, in that they have many Gods that they worship, each in different ways, and many different traditions, and it’s not considered wrong to worship more than one or engage in practices from different sects or traditions. They have enshrined in their tradition the notion that one should have an “Ishta Devatma”, or a chosen image of the Divine. Notice how it is “chosen”, and not commanded. One is supposed to chose, based on personal attraction, which forms of the Divine one worships, and which practices one uses to do that. So the whole DIY thing is even a part of that tradition, and Ramakrishna was merely extending that to include all religions, not just Hindu traditions.

Now, whether one agrees with this approach or not depends on the individual, but it’s coming out of this movement from east to west of universalism in religion. It’s origins are not merely in Hinduism, there are many others who have thought similarly over the centuries. Nor does it need to be centered on Hinduism, as it was for Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. In fact, it doesn’t need to have a center at all, other than the universal and all-pervading God. But it does seem that most of those who are influenced in this direction take a tack that aligns with this whole neo-Vedanta movement. It’s definitely a different way of looking at God than you will find in orthodox Christianity, and it’s obviously not for everyone. But for some people, it seems to work just fine, and the notion that God finds this sort of approach abhorrent or sacrilegious is not at all obvious.

> can you agree with the teachings of Jesus Christ without
> believing in the literal “factness” of Jesus being the “son of
> God”?

Over here in secular Scandinavia, the answer to your question would be “Yes.” Opinion polls suggest many nominal Christians respect Jesus because he was a proto-feminist, pacifist, advocated helping the poor etc.. Hence the wisdom of his teachings matter even if Heaven and Hell do not exist or even if he was not in fact the “son of God.”

It seems to me as if the future of religion in the West is increasingly related to cherished cultural traditions as well as “therapeutic spirituality”.

Having read you for a long time, I know what you mean about all these faiths being mutually exclusive. But that is only true if you accept the boundary between them as fixed. As you know (and have complained about) NOTHING in our culture is fixed anymore. (Blame capitalism and modernism.)

That said, I actually respect these folks determined search for what might be true in all these traditions. They may actually work there way back to Orthodoxy, who knows?

They are rather like you, searching for the real truth that they can recognize. You don’t have to like it. But to say that you “can’t take it seriously?” I doubt very much that they care how seriously you take it. For that matter, neither does the deity that you both claim to serve.

I used to always wonder at the concept of the anti-christ and how that evil might gain power. Later in life, on an admittedly long learning curve, I came to realize that evil gains power by claiming exclusive righteousness, and how that is where evil intent could hide. And while these weirdo’s in the north-west might be on the wrong path in the search for the trueth, it is more likely that they were just simply unable to accept the hypocritical self righteousness and exclusivity of swearing allegiance to any one religion. The spirituality they were seeking was misrepresented in religions that were selective of some people over others, some beliefs over others and some proposed trueth over some other proposed trueth. They might have recognized that encompassing other perspectives arrived at many of the same trueths and helped them accept a more inclusive spirituality in opposition to the exclusive, and therefore anti-christian ideology found in Christian denomination. This seems exemplified in much of the commentary that proposes that religious trueth cannot even be considered as a true religion unless it is exclusive of other beliefs, and that standing the test of time lends validity to disparate trueth found in different religions, while trying to combine the correlates invalidates the resulting beliefs. Or maybe, a brain fart is just the brain farting, and that they in fact just refer to same exact result.

I had a moment of enlightenment yesterday on the “elderly Jesuit” thread when I finally realized why this stuff means absolutely nothing to me: I’m religious, not spiritual. I’m perfectly happy to believe that Christ intended to found one Church as the ordinary means of salvation for all of humanity, that that Church is the Catholic Church, and that the task to learn to know, love, and serve God is greatly facilitated by access to this Church’s sacraments, especially the Eucharist. Even in my prayer life I’m quite content to stick to the old forms and pray the old words–one of my favorite authors once wrote something about how in doing otherwise nine times out of ten we’re just trying to teach the Almighty His own business, which is so patently true I wondered why I’d never noticed it before.

So the sort of mishmash being practiced by this group may be a start for them, a pathway to what is true, but it doesn’t really appeal to me and is truly foreign to my way of thinking about God and religion. I wish them the best in their journey, but I hope that they don’t fall for that bit about the journey being more important than the destination, which sounds profound until you start believing in eternal destinies for immortal souls, at which point it sounds rather nonsensical at best and dangerous at worst.

“So when UUs say “Christians, Jews, atheists, pagans, etc.”, what this tends to mean in practice is that humanism is the default position from the pulpit and from a plurality of the parishoners, with a good number of secularized Western Buddhists, a smaller number of secularized pagans, and a thin scattering of others – and UU Christians are often second or third-class citizens.”

You are correct in that the Midwest and Western congregations still are predominantly humanist (though there are still a number of staunch Universalist Christian congregations out there), but that is changing as older humanists die off and non-humanists replace them.

Yet over the past ten years we have seen slow and steady growth in our membership, both nationally and by region. So we must be appealing to some folks.

I’m with you, although my guess is that you and I are both spiritual and religious. Quite frankly, what I’ve read in this thread, for the most part, is utterly foreign to me. I’d much rather be *where I am*. I’m happy, content, have purpose, love God, and I hope, my neighbor.

I believe in the objective truth that Jesus rose from the dead, that this was witnessed by at least hundreds of people, that he is God, and that the Apostles changed their lives completely and ended up dying for their belief. They changed the world – these poor fishermen and tax collectors. I believe that Jesus founded the Catholic Church and through it, and its teaching, he will lead us in faith until the end of time. The teaching office of the Church (the magisterium), subject to the Pope, interprets the truth of scripture and religious beliefs for Catholics.

Personal, sometimes terribly sinful behavior, on the part of Church leaders, and there has been plenty of it for 2,000 years, has not prevailed against or brought down the Church. This is one of the most convincing proofs that the Holy Spirit guides and protects the Catholic Church, through which we find objective religious truth. These are my beliefs, and if it were ever required of me, I hope I would have the grace to die for them and for my God.

I have no problem with Erin or Bernie or Rod taking the traditional path that suits them best. I do have a problem with them, and others, like Rod, ridiculing those who take a different approach. In general, universalists have no problem with other people not being universalists, unless they are of the intolerant variety who target them as heretics or worse. And some traditionalists seem to think that intolerance is actually mandated by their religion. Sometimes, they feel they have to ridicule others to fulfill those mandates, sometimes they feel they have to kill to do so. Thank goodness most everyone in our culture agrees that it’s no longer appropriate to kill such people. Ridicule is much easier to live with. But at some point, I think we have to outgrow that too.

In this country they certainly were associated with Baptists and Congregationalists at one point, but modern Unitarian Christianity traces its roots back to Joseph Priestley and others who were dissenters from the Church of England.

“Sometimes, they (some traditionalists) feel they have to ridicule others to fulfill those mandates, sometimes they feel they have to kill to do so. Thank goodness most everyone in our culture agrees that it’s no longer appropriate to kill such people. Ridicule is much easier to live with. But at some point, I think we have to outgrow that too.”

I want to thank you for reminding some of us traditional believers that we should not kill or ridicule those with whom we disagree. That’s a life-changing thought for me and worthy of much reflection on my part. Wow! Thanks!

Richard Johnson, you exemplify why I tend to sympathize with iconoclasts. Here, you make an icon of Priestly, and pontificate that if Priestly had never come to America, there would never have been such a thing as Unitarians here. If you are trying to have a pissing contest, I’m afraid there are too many streams for any one person to be capable of winning.

“Christianity is hardly a “third class” religion in our Eastern congregations, such as King’s Chapel, First Parish, or any of these other Christian UUA congregations.”

Just FYI, that link has 24 congregations listed. As of 2011, there were 1,046 congregations in the Unitarian Universalist Association. So that’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.5 percent.

“Yet over the past ten years we have seen slow and steady growth in our membership, both nationally and by region. So we must be appealing to some folks.”

I never disputed that. And I think I said that it looks great on paper. All I know is that, at University Unitarian Church in Seattle when I was there, audible snickering could be heard when the word “God” was uttered from the pulpit. That and the (multiple times within a year) sermons and “faith stories” referencing people being saved from their Christian backgrounds made me feel that the welcome mat was definitely not out for people with the wrong beliefs.

When I was 16, my mother told me as long as I lived under her roof I was going to church on Sundays, but I was old enough to choose which church. I promptly abandoned the Presbyterians for the Unitarian fellowship down the street.

Mostly they were academic types, the touch-feely were a small minority. But I recall this older German couple who liked to intervene in the free-for-all to remind everyone that there is a documented Unitarian Universalist tradition, there are published compendia of what the church believes and stands for. They used to read passages from the book.

I suppose the folks in Seattle today would snicker at them too. But within the last ten years, I noticed a pamphlet on child-raising, on display in a Unitarian church, written by a Unitarian minister, which warned against the idiocy of refusing to impart values to your children because they should make up their own mind. Your children, he pointed out, are an empty glass. If you don’t pour your values into each glass, someone else will come along and pour in other values.